Electronic devices, such as mobile phones and personal digital assistants (PDA's), often contain firmware and application software that are either provided by the manufacturers of the electronic devices, by telecommunication carriers, or by third parties. These firmware and application software often contain errors or bugs. New versions of the firmware and/or software are periodically released to fix the bugs or to introduce new features, or both.
A generator in a manufacturing environment of an electronic device such as a mobile handset, or in other software development environments, generates update packages that are used to update the firmware and/or software components. These update packages are typically deposited into a repository. Unfortunately, several different generators may be generating different kinds of information. There is no easy way to populate these different kinds of update packages into a repository. More importantly, a repository within a distribution environment that can disseminate these update packages may need to accommodate the different formats in which the update packages are made available. In addition, other related information, such as metadata, often associated with update packages may be used for making decisions on dissemination of update packages. Such related information is often unavailable, however, to the distribution environments. Special software is often written to retrieve such related information from remote sources when necessary.
Users of mobile electronic devices who experience problems with their devices have no easy way to determine what is wrong, or how to initiate a quick fix. They typically take the mobile device back to a store or service center to have any associated problems diagnosed and fixed.
Mobile electronic devices are often cumbersome to operate, especially with the small keypads and keyboards with which they are equipped. Because of this, searching and retrieving information using a mobile electronic device is often a frustrating experience.
Currently, wireless handset and handheld device users must go to specific Internet portals provided by a carrier or manufacturer to view, select, and download device content such as, for example, pictures, melodies, and games to a personal computer (PC). The user must then use a custom software tool to load and synchronize the content into the device via a cable or short-range-wireless media such as Bluetooth or IrDA. All of this takes technical skills and knowledge, and is often a very daunting task to cell phone users.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art through comparison of such systems with the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.